Intro: As you know Takla is the most wide spread breed in Turkey. Even though, its origins lie the East and South-East region of Turkey, today it is kept as far West as Edirne. Parallel to this spread, a change also took place in how its kept, it has become a show breed when it is a performance breed. However, despite of this movement, there are still breeders who keep this breed solely for performance. Together with the show movement, there have been changes to the color variations of this breed also. Many new color, which did not exist in the past, started to come out. Old dull blacks left their place to the shiny dark blacks and the darker colors slowly were replaced by lighter colors. Again, marking variation of "Mermeri" or "Mermerit" named barless birds started to show. In fact, the breeders no longer have any patience for pied colors, which were just fine when the performance was the only important factor. Even though, they were not as big in size, the nose crest was a common feature of the Takla breed. Amount of knowledge on the genetic mechanism of the nose crest is rather small. Nose crest is thought to be recessive. However, there has not been any systematic study on the genetic form of the nose crest. This theses study in bachelors degree level is about researching nose crest's relationship with color, age and sex factors. Besides this, our goal is to understand some points regards to hereditary mechanism in young bird & parents similarities and its relationship with the size of nose crest.Research Technique: During this study, there have been measurements on 141 birds in the lofts of breeders in and around the city of Çanakkale. Measurements consists of the dimensions of the radius of the nose crests and the names used in the area of Çanakkale for the different types of nose crest have been noted, as in açma gül (open rose), punta gül (tight rose) and bıyıklı (mustashed). Together with these, birds from bloodlines that carry nose crest but themselves plain headed.

Findings and Results: Birds in this study have been recorded in table 5, based on their nose crest type, their parents nose crest type and the sex of each bird.

Table 1: Number of each bird that was classified by the type of their nose crest and their parent's type of nose crest.A: Açma (open rose); P: Punta (tight rose); B: Bıyıklı (mustashed); T: Tepesiz (plain head)

Plain headed bird listed on the first line of the Table 1 is reported as having both parents with open rose most likely is reported wrong by the breeder or the mother has mated with another bird in the loft. Outside of this finding, as noted earlier, rest of the results support the thought of nose crest, in relation to plain headedness, following a recessive genetic route.

As shown in Table 2, birds with different colors have rather large differences in the size of their roses. According to the averages discussed, there is 5.7 mm difference between the rose size of black selfs and yellow selfs. This figure might sound very small at first but it is significant when dissected in proportional ratios, as it is almost 50% larger in size. However, what needs to be paid attention here is the size difference of each color bird's body mass. Different color birds can very well be different sizes.

Table 2: Measurement of the radius of nose crest of the birds that took part in this study, averages based on their colors.

Table 3: Measurement of the radius of nose crest of the birds that took part in this study, averages based on their age group.

In Table, 3 it is shown that adult birds have 3 mm. larger roses then the young birds. Again this might seem rather insignificant but its importance must be underlined. This is because the 3 mm equals to 26% difference.

Table 4: Measurement of the radius of nose crest of the birds that took part in this study, averages based on their sex (mm).

It is possible to see that the female birds have larger roses then the male birds in table 4.

The relationship between the young birds' and each one of their parents' rose size is numerically symbolized by the character "b". The value of "b" changes between 0 and 1 and as it gets closer to 1 it is understood that the similarity is greater. What is the meaning of less similarity or more of it. Since, it is very natural for them to be very similar to their parents can easily be said. However, this number being small does not mean the parents have no effect on the size of the young birds rose size. It can only be concluded that the difference of size for all of these birds is greatly effected by the nutrition, care, environment and weather they are exposed to. The other way around, as the "b" value being 1 or close to 1, shows the environmental factors are not or very little factors in the size of the rose. When we look at the "b" value (b= 0.73), parents average size in comparison to young birds, we can say the variation of sizes in roses mostly caused by parents, in other words hereditary. In addition to this, the difference between the young bird/father and young bird/mother "b" values (bfather = 0.56, bmother = 0.67) showing a greater similarity between the young bird and the mother suggests that the mother is more of a factor on the size of the young birds' rose. One of the contributing factors to this might be the size of the egg and its nurturing value based on its size and how this effects the body structure of the young bird. The other factor might be the different genetic resources based on sex.

Table 5: Father / Young bird, Mother / Young bird and average of parents / young bird comparison figures.

Summary of conclusions from this study:There is a difference of rose size in different color birds. Mature birds have larger roses compared to young birds as expected. Because of this, it is important for young birds to go through a molt season in order to show the true size of their roses. In development of the size of the roses environmental factors are not as big contributors as hereditary factors. The effect of Father and Mother on the size of the rose of the young bird is weighed more onto Mother.

Special thanks to: For their contribution and support of this research, Administrators and Members of the Çanakkale Pigeon Breeders Association, and for most, dear Ali ÇELİK, Hakan DÜZENLİ, Erhan ÖZ and İsmail TOPCU.